


The Place Where I'll Find You

by TheColorBlue



Category: Winnie-the-Pooh (Disney)
Genre: Gen, about family, about growing up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-05
Updated: 2011-10-05
Packaged: 2017-10-24 08:17:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem is, he had asked Pooh to promise him that he'd never forget Christopher, not even when Christopher was a hundred, and Pooh was ninety-nine. The problem is, Christopher is the one who finds himself unable to forget, even while he wonders if he should be too old to be spending time out in these woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Christopher Robin is seventeen, come home from boarding school during the summer and sitting with Pooh in Pooh's Thoughtful Place, and thinking that everything seems different these days, and that he's come home with a fading black eye from a scuffle he had with one of the boys at school, and he hates fighting, but he hates when he's been put into a situation whether it's either hit back or be trod all over, but sometimes he's just...it makes him so angry, the unfairness, of how people can act, how the seniors could act and be allowed to lord themselves over the younger fellows, being taught that somehow you could be better than others and hurt them and laugh when they cried. Pooh beside him, has his paws to his temples, head bowed, eyes scrunched up, and clearly thinking so hard that Christopher can almost imagine the thoughts coming out as illustrations over Pooh's head. Christopher rubs his eyes, the weather hot, and the sunlight coming dark green through the leaves of the big oak shading them, and he asks Pooh what is the matter.

Pooh relaxes his paws and his expression as he looks up at Christopher, his button eyes friendly and his ears twitching gently, once.

"Oh," Pooh says. "I was only thinking--I was only thinking--that I am hungry, and I don't know whether to ask the bees for honey, or Rabbit."

Christopher blinks down at his old friend. "Well," he says, "I haven't seen Rabbit since I came back from school--perhaps we should go visit him. I think that would make the bees happy too."

"All right," Pooh says. He slips off the log they have been sitting on and holds one paw up, to take Christopher's hand. Christopher has stood up too, and he looks down at Pooh, kind of sadly, because he has been too tall to comfortably walk hand-in-hand with Pooh for a very long time now. Pooh never seems to remember this.

He leans over, though, and takes Pooh's paw anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

There had been points in his life in which it occurred to Christopher to forget about his friends in the One Hundred Acre Wood, to shelve the woods and the animals in some mental cabinet space and move on with his life. Those times had generally been during the school year, far away and kept in classrooms and school halls and school dorms and cricket fields and the occasional expedition into town wherein perhaps you saw a faraway girl, and the other fellows would goad you to do embarrassing things with the threat of being laughed at, either way.

But then he'd come home, in the summer. He'd sit on the wall behind the house, with his chin held in his hands, and he'd look out over the woods and fields that went out as far as he could see, feeling quiet and tired and lost. Finally, he'd slip down and tell himself, he was only going for a walk. It was only natural for someone his age to enjoy being outdoors, and doing simply nothing, for once in such a long time.

When he was fifteen, he spent an entire afternoon playing Pooh sticks with Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit, and Eeyore. It had been relaxing, doing nothing except enjoy the water as it moved under the bridge, taking their sticks with it.

When he was sixteen, he had kissed a girl for the first time, earlier in the spring. Boys talked about furtive, dirty things, like about the fairer gender, and sex. Christopher almost hadn't wanted to go out into the woods that summer, except--except one evening he did, anyway, and he visited Kanga, and he read books to Roo: adventure stories about bandits named Robin Hood, and would-be-kings named Wart, and pirate ships that sailed the seven seas. Kanga baked blueberry pie, and they ate their pie slices while watching summer rain run down the glass of the window panes.

The same summer, his uncle and father took him with them on his first hunting trip. They aimed for game birds, and Christopher purposely shot wide off his marks.

This year, Christopher is with Pooh visiting Rabbit, and Rabbit is so happy and drops all gardening work to invite Christopher into the house for tea (and honey, Pooh reminds Rabbit. Rabbit looks long-suffering, but doesn't tell Pooh what he is probably thinking, which is that Pooh would do well to shed a few pounds of his stoutness). Rabbit's house smells like dry earth and trees--which it is. The ceiling is a little low for Christopher, as he ducks his head down to get through the back door--the hole in the earth of the front door simply will not do--and there will be dirt on his clothes for all this wandering about in the woods--but he doesn't really care, presently.

\--

The problem is, he had asked Pooh to promise him that he'd never forget Christopher, not even when Christopher was a hundred, and Pooh was ninety-nine.

The problem is, Christopher is the one who finds himself unable to forget, even while he wonders if he should be too old to be spending time out in these woods. But there is something out here in these woods. Something that calms him and makes him happy, even while it makes him sad, even if he is only out here for a day every summer, or a few days.


	3. Chapter 3

Rabbit serves tea with cream and wild honey to Christopher Robin, and also a cup for himself, and for Pooh he doesn't even bother, he just puts the pot of honey--the word "hunny" spelled in large, chunky letters across the face--in front of Pooh, who has politely tied a napkin around his neck and picked up knife and fork--both of which he promptly puts back down as he dips both paws into the pot and begins to stuff himself with the sticky, golden substance. There is also white bread to eat with honey or butter, and a bowl of greens fresh from Rabbit's garden: carrots and radish and cucumber and celery--and Christopher politely accepts a cucumber and bites into it like a child, no knives or cutting things up into gentleman-sized pieces, and the cucumber is crisp and cool against his teeth and tongue. It tastes like the most marvelous thing he has eaten all day, just fresh vegetable in chunks that you can taste and feel as a heavy, natural weight in your hands--instead of the paper thin slices that are normally served on crust-less white bread with cream cheese, or in equally paper-thin salads tossed in some concealing dressing. Inside Rabbit's house, it is cool and dark, like a cellar, and Christopher's eyes trace the outlines of tree roots wounding through the curving walls.

Rabbit is saying, "Oh, I do hope you are learning quite a lot in school, Christopher Robin. All those days spent far away--it must feel a terrible muddle always learning things, but all of us know that you are ever so clever, it must be absolutely wonderful for you."

Christopher is reading the misspelled labels on the jars that line Rabbit's sturdy little cabinets, and he can't help a smile that is both soft and wry. "It can be a terrible muddle," he says to Rabbit. Pooh is still stuck nose deep in his honey jar. "But I suppose I am learning a lot." He is a learning a lot, and much of it he will never express out loud while wandering through the One Hundred Acre Woods.

Rabbit looks both pleased and proud, and Christopher feels strange, seeing that expression on his old friend's face. Like seeing how happy you seem to be making a dearly beloved cousin or uncle. Christopher looks down at his tea, pretending to contemplate the steam as it rose up.

On the way in, Rabbit's back door had looked as though it had been sagging somewhat. Tomorrow, Christopher decides, he will bring new hinges and screws to mend it.


End file.
